Apple TV universal search received a major update this week, expanding to 10 new apps in the United States. On the fourth-generation Apple TV, users can now search for movies and TV shows on Apple Music, Animal Planet GO, Crunchyroll, CuriosityStream, Investigation Discovery GO, Science Channel GO, TBS, TNT, TLC GO, and Tribeca Shortlist.
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For those unfamiliar with universal search, it's a feature that allows users to conduct Siri voice searches or text-based searches to find TV and movie content across a wide range of channels. At launch, universal search only supported a few channels, but Apple has been rapidly expanding the feature to encompass additional channels.
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Apple TV universal search is now available for a wider number of apps in the U.S., Australia, Canada, and the U.K., but the feature is limited to iTunes and Netflix in France, Mexico, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, and Sweden. In some other countries and regions, only movies in iTunes are supported.
Meanwhile, in Germany, users can now search for episodes on Galileo.
Top Rated Comments
Universal Search: the easiest way to find crap you don't want to see on channels you don't watch.®
Why would you be searching for crap?so, if I have Home Videos stored on my MacBook's iTunes I cannot easily get to them with the new AppleTV?
Looks like someone else jumped in on my behalf but no, I didn't phrase this well. I use the home sharing feature on my 4th generation Apple TVs and it works well, I'm just disappointed that universal search support has never been added for this type of content. The rationale I've seen used is that the search is server side so does not have an index of my local content but this could easily be extended to search both server and local then reconcile both result sets together.with ATV 3rd gen I think I go through My Computer and select the home sharing iTunes and can see music, tv, movies, Home Movies stored on that computer/iTunes.
Universal Search: the easiest way to find crap you don't want to see on channels you don't watch.®
A stupid comment from someone who think they are being "witty." Because everyone searches for stuff they don't want found.[doublepost=1481730969][/doublepost]I like the idea of the TV App, if for no other reason than the single sign on. But I always found it ridiculous that the ATV never had the ability to automatically show you your recently watched shows/movies. It's annoying to watch something and then after you leave it, you have to scroll through an entire list just to find what I was recently watching.
For example I have 500 Movies and probably 100 TV Shows, if I'm watching X-Men and leave off, I have to scroll through a list of 500 movies to get to the X-Men before I resume and scrolling using the ATV remote flaky.
Granted I can tell Siri to find X-men, but again a pointless Step. I just want to launch my purchased Movie or TV Shows thing and see a recently watched or up next (if I'm watching a TV Series) option at the top. The idea that they have to create this whole convoluted "uniformed" TV app thing just to get that one simple feature is asinine. I really hate the "new" Apple and would leave in a heart beat but Windows is terrible and I'm locked into stupid iTunes.
I don't care that it is local content. We aren't building a rocket here - Apple, figure it out.